I saw this post filled with great ideas for community conversations from my friend, Amber Teamann, on LinkedIn the other day, and wanted to share a part of it with some slight edits (you can read the entire post here), in which she talks about her experience as an educator and a parent with a “Four-Day Week” and how it impacts her family and her daughter.
Education is feeling it right now… budget cuts, public perception, the daily battles.
All of that shows up in decisions like school calendars. I was reading the EdDive article on four-day school weeks below. It does a good job laying out some of the benefits, but you can still feel it leaning toward the concerns.
Athens Independent School District, has been doing the 4 day week for as long as we’ve lived there (6 years) and is a really good reminder that these decisions land where they matter most. The kitchen table, the way we schedule our lives, and how she is completing her education. She’ll graduate in two years with her Associates Degree from Trinity Valley Community College, and is an accomplished athlete in ALL the sports places. You can’t tell me it’s not working for her and her peers.
There are real upsides.
Flexibility. Staff morale.
Definitely a break for some breathing room in a system that doesn’t get much of it. And there are real downsides. Learning time. Childcare. The ripple effect on families. (moms who work on Fridays!)
Both can be true at the same time. Education can’t be a zero sum game…we don’t need someone to lose for someone else to win, when it comes to the most important thing in our families lives…their childen.
What matters most to me isn’t which calendar a district picks. It’s how they get there.
Are they listening? Are they actually pulling in feedback from teachers, staff, and families? Are they willing to adjust when something’s not working? Do they SEE it benefitting all students?
As soon as I read this post, I sent a message to Amber, sharing that this is the epitome of “Forward, Together,” and I wanted to share a few thoughts on what she wrote and why it matters.
1. When Amber wrote the following:
There are real upsides. Flexibility. Staff morale. Definitely a break for some breathing room in a system that doesn’t get much of it. And there are real downsides. Learning time. Childcare. The ripple effect on families. (moms who work on Fridays!)
It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from economist Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.”
The “solutions” that work for some might be issues for others. And vice-versa. Pretending that a decision is perfect is biased at best, and disingenuous at worst.
That is why what Amber wrote next really matters…
2. “Education can’t be a zero sum game…we don’t need someone to lose for someone else to win, when it comes to the most important thing in our families lives…their childen.” Amber Teamann
Even though the ultimate decision can have a negative impact in some respects, we have to realize that the process is crucial, that the issues are heard in the first place, and that we do our best to mitigate them as much as possible.
This reminds me of Superintendent Chris Kennedy’s blog on “Forward, Together,” where he shared the following:
“….progress rarely comes from winning arguments. It comes from building trust, fostering connection and helping people move together. That does not mean avoiding disagreement. Healthy organizations need challenge. They need people willing to ask hard questions, resist easy answers and push on assumptions.”
It is totally fine to lean to one side of a decision, but only if you are willing to listen to the issues with that solution. You will never find perfection, but when you listen to those who disagree with you, you are more likely to find a version that is much better than what you had previously.
3. And even if you don’t find a “better” version, the process of how you came to the decision matters.
Amber shares the following:
What matters most to me isn’t which calendar a district picks. It’s how they get there. Are they listening? Are they actually pulling in feedback from teachers, staff, and families? Are they willing to adjust when something’s not working? Do they SEE it benefitting all students?
What I love about this is that, first of all, it starts with initiating the conversation, but it doesn’t end there.
The conversation matters after as well, and I share the following in “Forward, Together” why “discussion” matters more than “debate”:
“The reason I am more interested in discussion over debate is because the latter implies winners and losers, while the former is hopefully undertaken in search of a shared solution.”
Do we move forward with consensus, or are we willing to revisit the path forward, and what adjustments need to be made based on feedback?
“Forward, Together” is not just about starting the conversation with your community, but about ensuring it continues.
Years ago, as a principal, our school community removed award ceremonies because we believed a) they were detrimental to students who lost out and b) it was harmful to students who won them because they focused more on getting the “checks” to get the award, and lost focus on creativity and deep-learning (I wrote a post on this in 2010 and you can check out the revisit here.)
Whether you agree with what I said above about awards isn’t the point as much as how we decided with our community. We did not have a set agenda for what we would do, but as a community, we came together to discuss the topic.
Honestly, if you had told me I would remove the end-of-year awards as a principal, I would have told you that was “soft” and a terrible idea. But as we read research together (staff and families) and continued discussions, we came to that decision.
Through that discussion, I changed my thinking on the topic as well.
We didn’t do it to be “soft,” but because we actually thought a focus on deeper learning was a way to raise expectations for what we were trying to do as a society.
Not everyone agreed, but everyone felt heard and part of the process.
Even in the book, I share a time when my entire staff went against something I believed. Because I was so committed to finding the best ideas through community, I acquiesced and defaulted, with the caveat that we could revisit it later. That is the ongoing discussion Amber mentions.
But I have also seen the opposite happen.
A great idea, backed up by research and all the evidence in the world, falls flat not because it is a bad idea, but because it is made in isolation, away from the school community.
The lack of conversation quickly turns potential advocates into adversaries.
When someone is left out of a decision, especially when you disagree with the direction, you might even cheer for its failure. Having the conversation to get everyone to agree is not the point; it is having the conversation in the first place.
Based on what I just shared, here are three questions I hope you will consider when moving forward in a new initiative or direction:
- When making important decisions, are we more focused on being right or on truly understanding the perspectives of those impacted?
- How often do we revisit decisions after they are made, and what systems do we have in place to continue listening and adjusting?
- In our own leadership, are we creating processes where people feel heard, even if they don’t agree with the final outcome?
What we choose matters, but how we choose matters more.
Because in the end, people might forget the specifics of a decision, but they rarely forget how they were included, or excluded, in the process.
If this work interests you, I hope you will consider checking out “Forward, Together: Moving Schools from Conflict to Community in Contentious Times.”
